'Timid' stop leaving unhelpful reviews. It's a waste of your time and mine. Stop degrading yourself.
Now then, ugly business out of the way, on to the good stuff:
Thank you all for waiting so patiently. I'm sorry it took me so long. I apologize for error or anything, I'll try and edit it better later, but I was pretty pleased with how this came out. It may seem like little happens but as a hint, I have to say if you look for it, a lot is revealed here. So um, hope you like it and I know this may seem like a jump, but if you read between the lines, you'll understand and if it's still not clear, in upcoming chapters, it will be. The title of the chapter might help too.
Thanks for the encouraging reviews and thanks to people who told me not to give up on it!
Dedicated to: The Writer you Fools, Alena-chan, Cherry Jade and my dear castle in the air
Go check out their writings. They're all different and all very worth it.
Glass
Chapter Ten: Opposites
The dim gold-red flicker of the candle flames cast a mild glow across the long dining table. Set tonight with a pristine white tablecloth all embossed with opalescent flourishes and swirls, the chairs also sported matching white coverings lined in a delicate white-gold satin. As all was white right down to the silk-smooth napkins, everything took on the light flare of orange-red from the fireplace and the gold-red from the candles.
Robin sat at one end of the long, well stocked table and Raven sat at the other. He wore his cape, as usual, and a fine black suit that made him seem almost a phantom in his own castle...all he was missing was the mask. She wore a simple lilac gown of the softest velvet with earrings and a necklace with amethysts that sparkled in the firelight.
And they ate in silence, beautiful, uncomfortable, evening silence.
Raven lifted her fork, set it down and picked it up again, twirling it idly in between her middle and index fingers.
"Not hungry tonight?" Robin asked, not giving hints as to whether he was offended by this probability or not. He sighed softly, resting his chin on his right hand as he looked down the table at her. She looked ravishing tonight, luminous like the moon and delicate like violets. But her look was spoiled by the way her frown was deeper tonight and this worried him…what troubled her?
He wished she could tell him.
He wished he knew the words to say to tell her he wished she could.
But then again, he wished a lot of things.
"Not very," she admitted dolefully, setting her fork down gently again. She let her eyes wander to the fireplace and her irises drowned temporarily in the gold flicks of flame. Only when Robin spoke again did she break from her trance, and even then not entirely.
"What...what troubles you?" he asked at last and he thought it did not sound all too horrible, considering how he had imagined it sounding—much worse, it should be noted. His deep blue eyes considered her thoughtfully, as usual and now she met his gaze, steady and strong...just like her.
"You will think I am silly," she prefaced. He shook his head.
"No, I won't," he promised.
"I do not know," she said softly and Robin felt his heart do strange, horrible things...he knew. She missed her family. She wanted to go home.
She wanted to leave.
"Raven," he began, suddenly all too ready to tell her everything, but not the 'everything' about the curse's truth, oh no...rather, the 'everything' about the odd stirrings he'd been feeling that had nothing to do with their obligatory bond and everything to do with another kind of bond he was beginning to realize he yearned for.
But the high, grand doors to the dining hall's great expanse flew open and Robin's lips pressed close in a thin line.
"Master, I must interject," X said and his voice was not of the servant—far to airy, but then again, that was very much X. Robin arched a brow.
"I barely even began to speak," he said with deceptively even tones. X shook his head and Raven thought she saw him roll his eyes but it was dark and one couldn't be certain of anything in the dark.
"Yes, I know. But I felt what you were going to say master and I insist you do not," X said and Robin's gaze grew as cold as the winter that draped over his domain. He stood, pushing his chair back from the table, and now his expression was one of open displeasure. But Raven felt more than saw his emotions through their bond—anger...irritation...and...fear?
She did not like to think of Robin being afraid.
"X, you have no right barging in on dinner to lay down restrictions you have no power to enforce," Robin said, his attitude as impassive as a stone wall. A breeze from nowhere, cold as snow and strange as night put out the candles; the fire in the fireplace wavered to dimming embers. Raven repressed a shiver.
"But I am right! You will not tell her!" X retorted, loud and unabashed now. Clearly he felt he'd been putting up with a lot of slack from Robin, for whatever reason and Raven could not discern why. She fisted her hands in the folds of her skirt, anxious and estranged suddenly in this vast and ornate hall and all the finery...lost in the wood again. She stared at her plate as X and Robin continued their argument and it became clear to her that they had momentarily forgotten she was even there.
Something about that hurt.
"I will say and do what I please!" Robin shouted
The embers in the fireplace hushed themselves into darkness and Raven found herself immersed in blindness. She bit her lip.
"See master? You cannot put her before everything else! That is not how the curse works and you know it!" X hissed through the blackness. Heart twisting unkindly, Raven softly pushed her chair back and stood, looking around for any sign of light, any indication of how to get out of that room...find a door...a window...anything.
But she needed out. Her nerves piqued at the next set of words exchanged.
"She is our guest," Robin's voice was noticeably forced now.
"She is much more than a guest master. Pray, remember the words: 'eternal winter for the eternal sinner.' Is that what you want...Robin?" X bit out and his words were sharp little daggers, rough and unforgiving. Raven could hear Robin shifting in the darkness, as if trying to keep himself from doing something he might regret. She was well aware of how duel-reminiscent their conversation was—one hit for one hit and so on...but it felt distinctly like the hits were coming of their own will toward her, running and wrapping themselves around her like thorn-ridden vines.
And the words cut like thorns too.
"X—" Robin began.
"We have waited for so long! Robin, do not deny us what you first offered! You would rob yourself and us of our freedom for the sake of a nosy, caustic, ignorant child!" X's volume echoed through the great hall and Raven felt the beginnings of an eerie sort of suffocation, cold...thick...endless. Vaguely she was aware she must have knocked over one of the candlesticks as her hand hit something in the dark and a metal clang could be heard.
"Raven?" Robin remembered her presence with a sore disappointment in himself for forgetting at all. But Raven did not answer. She closed her eyes, almost pointless in the absolute dark they all stood, but not quite. Instead of searching for a light, she took her mind and tried to feel the direction of the castle...how it seemed to move around her...which would explain why things always seemed to be in a different place.
Even the geography of the place was enchanted, it seemed.
She held her breath too, taking steps, not answering to the calls of her name from Robin...X did not call to her, but then, her heart clenched, she did not expect him to. Odd how she felt a loss for that; it wasn't as though they two had shared anything special, any moments of kindness—not like she and Robin had...but the feeling of loss was there all the same.
And she tried to bury it.
Raven considered using her newfound magic, but she did not want X or Robin to be able to find her so quickly. Just as well, when this thought occurred to her for the third time, her hands brushed what felt like a wall. She ran her hands over it to soon find a thick and curvaceous molding and then something hard, cold, and metal...the door handle.
"Master," X's voice crept through the hall to brush against her ears as her hand paused on the handle. She did shiver now as Robin shifted in the distance behind her; she could hear the rustle of his clothes.
"What, X?"
"She is not worth it," X said coolly and Raven flinched.
Not worth it?
Why do you hate me so? She wondered and surprised herself with the depth of her sadness at her understanding she might never know...that rather, she might continue to go on not knowing while she felt X went on hating her and then she might consequently continue to feel badly about it.
But it made no sense. For all essential purposes he was what Raven back home would have called less than cryptically, an insufferable cad, among other things far more colorful. But Raven felt she was constantly missing something...some secret, perhaps even some part of the curse that dealt specifically with X and that was her only potential answer for being hurt when he so openly vocalized his dislike of her.
Still, it wasn't much and Raven wasn't big on theory so much as fact, but fact wasn't even an option here, it seemed.
Gently she opened the door and stepped through, closing it behind her to another "Raven," from Robin.
When the click of the door sounded, she ran as fast as she could to her room, locked the door and took seat by one of the windows. It was snowing. She could hear the pound of other footsteps—Robin and X, she gathered—coming down the hall, but she ignored them.
To her disbelief, she felt a few hot tears trickle down her cheeks and she wiped them away furiously. Upset at nothing? She did not know.
That was the problem mostly these days: she did not know.
Forehead against the window, she fell into a cocoon-like sleep, all sounds, sights and senses barred from her consciousness for a few, blessed hours.
If one looked in from the outside, one might have thought she was a statue, flesh as pale as the new snow now, sooty lashes laying in perfect curves on her skin, and the arch of her brows that suggested she feared to believe in anything.
Of course, no one was looking in from outside the window.
But someone was waiting from outside the door.
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He stood outside her room, ear against the door, cheek too. It had been hours, and she hadn't emerged.
"X," he muttered.
"What?" X asked, sounding thoroughly disinterested. Robin's gaze darkened as he turned to face his straight-faced friend,
"At least make pretense that you care about her," he all but growled. X merely waved a hand in dismissive circles. The two had simmered down something admirable during their five second dash to Raven's room and were back to being complacent with each other, maddeningly so almost.
But then again, as said once before, their relationship was, if nothing else, odd.
"She is being most difficult. Surely you do not deny it," X said simply, a cool bite to his words exuding his unexplained irritation with the girl and Robin shook his head.
"Perhaps, but," he began, tired of the old argument but unwilling to back down.
"But it is the truth and that is all," X cut him off and something hard snapped in Robin's eyes, a flicker of rage as he strode over to X and grabbed onto his collar. X, for once, showed a moment of shock, quick as he was to glaze over it with the languid and careless look he so often opted for.
"Do not forget X, that I am master here," Robin whispered, and his words slithered through the shadows like a deadly hiss. X eyed his master with an odd light of someone who knew more than he ought to.
"And yet," X whispered back: "You are a slave to it."
The master of the castle dropped X to the floor, turned on his heel and began to walk away, but paused next to Raven's door once again. A furtive glance was all he gave it this time though before he disappeared into the dark of the endless hall. X watched him go, an eerie light in his stare that refracted like explosions in the moonlight that filtered in through the tall corridor windows. It was rare for his master to show such...volatile emotions. Usually he hid them well, saved them for times of solitude. X understood this meant his master truly cared for the girl, which could be good...but mostly it was bad of course.
He rubbed his throat where the collar had been tugged up against the skin; it burned a little, but not so badly. X shook his head.
He wondered if he and his master were forever doomed to cat and mouse.
And he might have thought further on it, but for the creak of a recently inspected door. X shifted back into the shadow of the wall, melting away almost entirely, but still his eyes watched. A familiar head of heliotrope poked out of the door and amethyst eyes turned to stare right where he stood, and X held his breath. After a moment, Raven's gaze deviated however, and X went back to breathing—quietly, but normally. He followed her movement as she stepped fully out the door and clicked it softly shut behind her; watched as she glanced around as if she knew someone was watching and then, watched as she took off at a sudden dead run into the shadows ahead—just the way Robin had gone.
X stepped out from his own shadows. Who did she think she was, running off at an odd hour of the night after the master had waited all that time for her? Whether or not he liked her was not the question here. It was a matter of respect to the master of the castle, regardless of his personal gripe with the girl...and this?
This simply would not do.
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Roy Harper sat—or rather appeared sitting, as he really floated above or through it—on one of the gilded ledges in the corridor. One of his favorite places to take in the quiet, Roy often found he could not sleep and consequently, often found himself on this ledge, one of many that fell decoratively between each of the columns that backed the walls and separated each of the many hall windows. His feet dangled as did his legs over the side and he repressed a sigh at their transparent state. The closest to solid he could get was a mere illusion and even that would flicker with the wrong light.
Roy Harper missed being human.
But with this odd form in which the curse had laid itself upon him, came a new kind of ability. Not that it did him much good, for what use did he have for shooting light arrows? None to speak of that he could think. Still, Roy was a trusting sort of fellow, even where curses were involved and he trusted there was, at the very least, a reason for the way things happened to...well, happen.
So it was that Roy, or rather, Speedy, resigned himself in a much more cheerful fashion to the current situations than say, X or Robin himself even. Briefly, he wondered if Raven had figured the pair out yet and even as that very thought made its way into his head, he heard the soft padding of feet against the hall carpet and looked down as Raven hurried as if pursued through the darkness. Quirking a brow, Speedy faded into complete invisibility and though any onlooker could no longer see him, any onlooker could comfortably bet that the direction he set off in was the same as Raven's.
X sprinted through moments later, a little behind, but that'd never stopped him before.
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Raven wasn't sure why she was running. It just felt like the only way to move for some reason.
The stillness of the castle air seemed to mix with the eternal winter and the blackness of the hall draped about her like a shroud, but Raven was used to the dark. Even back home Garth had always teased her about ruining her eyes, what with reading in the dark so often when candles were scarce. This darkness was no different, she told herself and asked her heart to calm down, but it wouldn't listen.
She'd woken and immediately known Robin to be outside her door, suspected she'd heard X as well, but couldn't be sure. The only thing she'd been certain of aside from that, was that she did not want to have to face them together. For whatever reason, that unsettled her greatly and it struck her that her initial feeling on that was that meeting with the two of them simultaneously should not be possible; it simply felt wrong.
But here she was again, making little or no sense to herself and she realized dully that she had ceased running.
Then she heard, or rather, felt, a brush of a breeze and stiffened. But then dawning came to her and she let her guard ease a bit.
"Speedy?" she whispered. He materialized out of nothing, as usual.
"Where were you going?" he asked, not at all a whisper.
"I...I don't know. To see Arella, I suppose," Raven said quickly, not really meaning it.
"Oh, right," Speedy said and then, "But really, what's wrong?" Raven sighed. He wasn't going to turn the other cheek this time. Just as well though, perhaps, I should talk to someone other than my horse, Raven mused dryly and shifted her weight a bit.
"I, I don't know. That was it really...I think I wanted to see Robin," she finished lamely, feeling distinctly displaced by her need to go on a feeling rather than a fact. It contradicted every inch of who she was before the castle came into her life.
"But didn't he go to you earlier?" Speedy asked, perplexed.
"He did, but so did—"
"X," Speedy finished with a half-smile. He rubbed the back of his head and Raven tried to ignore the fact that she could see the hand through the head. "Yes, they are rarely too far apart," Speedy said thoughtfully.
"He makes me uncomfortable. Robin is very polite and...patient. X is..."
"Not," Speedy summarized without meanness and Raven nodded.
"Well, yes," she agreed and Speedy shrugged with a shake of his head.
"It's in his nature," the redhead said as if that should explain everything. When Raven gave him her best blank stare, he added slowly, "A man can't be perfect you know."
"He's far from it," Raven replied testily and blew a few stray strands of hair out of her eyes.
"What is it I'm far from?" X did a ridiculously good imitation of Speedy materializing out of nothing, but since he blended in so well with the shadows, Raven made an allowance for this through gritted teeth. Normally she didn't tolerate people sneaking up like that.
But that was the thing of it here, wasn't it? Nothing here was normal.
"Far from whom I want to have to talk to right now," Raven said coolly and walked past Speedy who shrugged at X who arched a brow. Exactly what had he done to get under the 'Beauty's' skin?
Even he wasn't so sure.
X followed, waving for Speedy to stay behind. Not out of subservience, but more out of trust, Speedy obliged.
"Stop that," she whirled on X as he continued to follow her for much the length of the hall.
"What makes you think I'm following you? Maybe I just happen to be going the same way, maybe..." X trailed off thoughtfully.
"I know you don't like me," Raven bit out, "And that's fine, but why won't you just let me be?" she moved to speed her pace. X grasped her wrist without thinking.
"What makes you think I don't like you?" he whispered and Raven was reminded of how being too close to people made her severely uncomfortable...nervous even. She averted her eyes.
"Well, I—"
"I mean, you're perfectly right," X said curtly but even through her discomfort Raven noted how very much X sounded like a person trying to cover up the truth. She looked up sharply and after a moment's scrutiny, tried in vain to twist out of his hold.
"Then let me go, if I'm so contemptuous," Raven tore her wrist away from X's grip and stumbled back. "You're taunting me, aren't you?" she asked in an odd combination of sadness and annoyance.
"Robin is soft with you. He hasn't even told you why you're here, why he's always so nice to you, why he 'needs' you," X advanced on her. He was never a patient soul and all this waiting...it had driven him to an invisible edge.
"I don't know what you speak of...exactly. Yes, he has been kind but...he had no choice, bringing me here...he might have died," Raven tried to recount in her head as best she could the reasoning Robin had offered. But something was wrong with the words. They were becoming more and more muddled, cloudy like mist and had a smothering quality to them that snuffed out possibility for retrieval. "And there is the bond...He..."
"Raven...Beauty," X said, still a whisper, and Raven cringed at the return of the mocking nickname. "Don't you see what's right in front of you? You're an intelligent girl. I'll grant you that. So open your eyes," he said and forced her to meet his gaze, tilting her chin up between his fingers.
"They are open," she whispered back.
"Then you are blind," X said and released her. Raven stood a moment, stupefied. What on earth was he going on about? She could not make heads or tails of it.
"If I am so blind, then why do you not help me see oh clairvoyant one?" she challenged to X's back. He stopped...turned.
"That I could," he said and his eyes were dark. "But I cannot. I have given all the hints, all the slight nuances I am allowed," he said and when Raven went to interject, he walked back over to place a hand on her mouth. "You must figure it out for yourself from here on, Raven. But one last thing, you may not like what you find as you are so clearly not fond of me," he said this last bit with a weary smirk, the kind that was used to hide some other emotion.
"It is only because you seem to despise me so unreasonably, and treat me like a child," she defended and X laughed hollowly.
"You are a child," he replied.
"You know nothing," Raven glowered.
"And yet I know more than you," he returned. Raven opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again and closed it, and after feeling thoroughly like a fish for a bit too long, began to simply walk away. "I know you think Robin is such a kind man," X called after her and she stopped short in her tracks.
"And are you telling me I think incorrectly?" she asked without turning to meet a gaze she had no desire to register. X took a few silent steps toward her.
"I am," he said.
"I thought you were done giving hints," Raven said tightly, not realizing her hands were enfolded in handfuls of her skirts, wringing them nervously.
"I thought of a loophole for the magic. Nothing is black and white," X said lazily and Raven was very aware of him standing now directly behind her. "It might behoove you to do the same," he said, leaning in near her ear.
What is happening? Why is he...? What is he...? He's only trying to confuse me, but... Raven's mind went askew as she felt her body flush in spite of herself at X's nearness.
"Where is this coming from, X? I could swear on the graves of my father and mother not a day ago that you wanted nothing to do with me that involved coming within twenty yards, much less...several inches," she said quietly, doing her best to cover up her confusion but still elicit an answer. X chuckled and she felt his breath on her nape.
"You don't understand much about the curse do you? It doesn't just change the affected...it makes them, some of them become other things, yes, but others...others become completely different people," he said. His face was so close to her own, leaning over her shoulder...Raven felt her heart picking up pace as she had the odd impression of his eyes burning into her soul and his fingers on her wrists felt hot suddenly. She wanted to know what was happening to her, why X was behaving so...strangely, what the curse was...when she could go home...why she felt the way she felt with his closeness...why Robin seemed so very far away... X's voice interrupted her wishful thinking however, "Robin is soft with you," he whispered again. "But not me," he finished this time and without warning spun her around, pressing his lips down hard on hers.
Eek, I know, to some it may seem sudden like 'what the hell was that?' But it will make sense. I ask you to stay with me. :)
Review if you've got a sec please! You know I appreciate them. In fact, I don't know if this is a bad thing to say, but often a review will make my day.
Hope to have new chapters of other stories soon-ish and a one-shot in response to alena-chan's challenge.
-Rei